


the language of angels

by pianoandcookiedoughlover



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: but a little bit of ray and carlos in there, just some good old molina family dynamics, mostly from julie's perspective, watching them grieve after rose's death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-15 04:13:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28807113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pianoandcookiedoughlover/pseuds/pianoandcookiedoughlover
Summary: Julie's life was shattered after her mom died. Her smile, her trust, her warmth were all stolen from her, she felt, but worst of all, Julie thought that Rose's death took away music too.Only through grieving and learning to accept what happened will she realize that music is truly the language of angels.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	the language of angels

**Author's Note:**

> hello! so this is definitely a much different style than the genius interviews that i did, but i really wanted to explore what happened to the molina family after rose's death, so this is what we came up with. obviously a major trigger warning death for this entire fic, but I'll make sure to put in any additional ones in the notes of each chapter. i hope you enjoy!
> 
> tw // panic attack

She wanted to be beautiful again.

She wanted to have that vibrancy inside of her, that color, that life.

Now, she’s dark, cold, and hopeless.

She’s ugly.

She’s broken.

\----

Julie Molina lost her mom on a Tuesday morning. In an unusual manner, the sky gloomed over the shining lights of L.A., suffocating the stars of Hollywood.

As Rose’s hand went limp, Julie closed her eyes, took a deep breath, put Rose’s hand gently on the bed. She stood up, walked to the vending machine. She bit her lip hard.

She looked.

D-6.

It wasn’t as though she hadn’t expected this. She worked for weeks to try and make peace with it before it happened, so that she could be there for her dad and Carlos. She would be the rock, the glue that holds them all together.

She would be like her mom.

But right then, the chips were way too salty and were broken into hundreds of pieces, the bag was mostly air anyway and suddenly she realized she couldn’t breathe properly. Nothing was as it should be and everything was wrong because her mom wasn’t there to keep it all in balance.

“Julie?!” Her dad’s voice floated down the hall, barely audible over her struggling breath. 

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ray crouch down beside her, putting his hand on her arm to comfort her.

“Julie, breathe, it’s okay. It’s okay.”

“No . . .” Her sobs interrupted her as she tried to get the words out.

“Julie, qué ha pasado?” 

“Mom . . .”

With that, Ray’s face dropped in a nanosecond, realizing the implications of what his daughter just said. It wasn’t broken yet, though. Humans do strange things - they hold onto hope until their eyes and their minds can’t deceive them anymore and they have to adjust to their reality.

Ray Molina still had hope.

“Carlos, stay with your sister.” He beckoned him over and had him sit next to Julie while he went into Rose’s room. 

Carlos sat next to Julie, looking nervously between his own fingers and Julie’s tear-streaked face. “Julie? Are you okay?”

Julie’s voice caught in her throat in hesitation. In her mind, Carlos was still a baby, she couldn’t give him the news that will destroy his entire world, she just couldn’t. Her next sob reverberated in the empty hallway. 

Carlos appeared shocked at the sheer pain he could hear in Julie’s voice. His face crumpled as he connected the dots. In a barely audible voice, full of age and experience he should not have, he asked, “Mom?”  
  


Julie turned to look him in the eyes for the first time since he sat down, and opened her mouth to say something, anything, but she was interrupted by her father’s footsteps walking towards them. Both Molina children snapped their heads towards his authority. They were both unnerved by the way he stepped, as if the ground wasn’t guaranteed to be there, the way his face constricted in a way they had never seen before.

For the first time, they saw their father in the most vulnerable state he could possibly be in. 

Carlos and Julie stood up to meet him, Carlos helping Julie up. 

Ray took a deep breath, looked up to stop any tears from flowing, then determinedly walked over and enveloped his children in an embrace that could teeter skyscrapers. 

Their family was now down to three.

Carlos started to cry, his wailing sounds piercing both Julie and Ray’s hearts. Julie herself resumed her sobs into Ray’s t-shirt. And Ray, resting his head on Julie’s head, let tears flow down his face, hidden away from his children now. 

Standing next to her dad and Carlos, Julie Molina was starting to wonder whether she could really be the rock of the family. 

\----

Julie was sitting in the front seat of the family’s old car, the radio playing the first station that came on - not any music that any of them particularly like - and the constant thrum of palm trees flying past them in a blur. Her eyes, however, were trained on the coffee stain in the front cup holder, then the three small flower stickers on the lid of the glovebox that Julie had put there when she was younger, then finally drifted to the stack of papers in the pocket on the door.

Sheet music. Lyrics.

Things her mom had come up with while driving and made sure to write down so she wouldn’t forget them.

Julie leaned to grab one of them, but before she could wrap her fingers around the stack, she hesitated. She didn’t want to unlock another memory only for it to go crashing around her head like all the rest were at that moment.

She turned her head to look at Carlos in the backseat, who was now asleep, exhausted from the emotional turmoil of the day. It seemed as though the tears had formed permanent crevices on his cheeks after crying so long.

Turning back to her dad, she asked in a quiet voice, “Papi, where are we going? We’ve been driving for an hour.”

Her dad looked at her briefly before focusing his eyes on the road again. Seeing her pained and vulnerable face, he sighed. “I don’t know, Julie. I don’t know. I thought - I thought maybe driving would help us work through it, you know? Give us something normal to do, but . . .” He trailed off, choking up again. He coughed slightly but his voice remained strained.

“I don’t know what to do, Julie.”

Julie closed her eyes to hold back a sob herself. A drive in this car was normal - Rose would always take her to school, her music blaring through the car, her morning coffee on standby. Ever since she was a little girl, Rose would encourage Julie to sing and dance and not give a care in the world what anyone else thought. Even on the way to school, in the car with Rose it felt . . . alive. 

Then, though, it felt gray and lost, like a ghost town. The remains of Rose’s impact were stamped into the fabric and machinery of the car, but Rose herself had disappeared. 

And all Julie wanted was her warm hand grabbing hers, reminding her like she had before she went into school for her music program audition, “Show ‘em what you got, superstar.”

Julie took another look at Ray’s face, his eyes nearly on the verge of tears, and then put her own hand on her dad’s hand for comfort, making him look at her.

“Let’s go home, Papi.”

He nodded after a moment, understanding that that was the place they needed to be right then. He took the next left to lead them home, amazed and eternally grateful for his daughter’s strength and guidance.

\----

Ray put Carlos in his bed the minute they got back, not wanting to disturb him or wake him up to his new reality. While he did that, Julie walked around the house in a surreal state, taking in all these things that never used to be foreign to her.

The pots hanging up in the kitchen felt on the edge of collapse, as though they would fall any minute and crash almightily.

The pillows on the couch were all strewn about from the movie night they had had the night before, but the disorganization felt suffocating to Julie, reminding her that nothing was as it should be.

The air in the house was cold, now that Rose’s life and energy had been sucked out of it. Julie hugged her arms to herself to warm up. She looked for her favorite fuzzy blanket in the living room, and then realized it was in the studio. She scoffed slightly at the inconvenience, took a deep breath, and stepped outside to head to the studio.

She walked up to it like usual, but with every increasing step, her breath started to get quicker and quicker. The magnetism the studio once had seemed to have now had the opposite effect, begging her to stay away. She stopped on the steps once she was able to see the studio in its entirety. Looking down at her hands, she realized their shakiness, then saw the shallowness of her breath in the movements of her chest. 

The studio  _ was  _ Rose. She made it uniquely her own, breathed life into, created in it. 

Everything else Rose had once touched now was hollow and empty, and Julie didn’t want to subject the studio to that fate.

Julie spun on her heel to walk back inside the house, tears threatening to spill at any moment. Shutting the door behind her, she saw her dad at the kitchen table, head in his hands, his body lifting in heaves periodically.

He was crying.

Julie had never seen her dad cry.

“Papi?” Her voice barely could be heard, as though she was afraid of shattering him if she spoke too loudly.

He looked up suddenly, surprised to see her there. He wiped at his eyes aggressively and tried to chuckle slightly. “Lo siento, Julie, I was just . . .”

Julie walking over and sitting next to him interrupted his sentence. She looked at him sadly; she didn’t want her own father to feel as though he couldn’t be sad over something like this.

“You know, it’s okay. To cry.”

“I -” Ray started. “Do you need anything, Julie? Anything at all? I can make you some food or I can read to you or -”

“Dad. Stop. What I need is for you to talk to me.”

Ray sighed, shaking his head. “I’m okay, Julie. You and Carlos are my priority.”

“Your feelings matter too, dad.  _ You _ matter,” Julie emphasized. 

“I just . . . I don’t know what to even do with myself. It’s like there’s a giant hole inside of me and if I don’t fill it quick enough . . .” He didn’t even want to finish the thought. 

Julie sucked in her lips hearing Ray talk so vulnerably and openly about his feelings, hating that she knew exactly what he meant.

“Sometimes, it’s just better to get some sleep, get away from this all. Then we can talk in the morning.”

Ray chuckled slightly with watery eyes. He tucked a strand of hair behind Julie’s face. “How did you suddenly grow up to be just like your mom?”

Julie began to cry at the mention of her mother. She wanted to be as strong, as kind, as colorful as her mom had been, but right then, she didn’t feel like any of that. 

And she didn’t mind not being like her mother just yet - but she wanted,  _ needed _ her here to teach her how to be that. 

She needed her mom to teach her how to be Julie.

Her voice was strained as she asked him, “What if I can’t be like her, dad?”

“You, Julie Molina, don’t need to be like anyone else. You’re absolutely perfect the way you are.” Ray then got up and held out his arms for Julie to fall into, crying into his shirt once again. The warmth of his touch wasn’t a replacement for Rose’s, but it was Ray’s, and she needed that at that moment. Softly, her voice dripping with her own fear for the future and her despair in the present, she asked her dad one last thing:

“Can you sleep with me tonight?”

Ray kissed her head and whispered “sí” above her hair. They remained in the darkness of the kitchen for a while longer, Julie crying evenly and regularly into Ray’s now echo chamber of a chest. Even with his heart crushed, he managed to summon the strength to soothe Julie with soft nothings, promises of “okayness” and healing when he knew he wasn’t even going to be able to fall asleep that night, or for months afterward, never wanting to accept that Rose, the love his life, was gone.


End file.
